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I have carried out a search for Planet 9 in the IRAS data. At the distance range proposed for Planet 9, the signature would be a 60 micron unidentified IRAS point source with an associated nearby source from the IRAS Reject File of sources which received only a single hours-confirmed (HCON) detection. The confirmed source should be detected on the first two HCON passes, but not on the third, while the single HCON should be detected only on the third HCON. I have examined the unidentified sources in three IRAS 60micron catalogues: some can be identified with 2MASS galaxies, Galactic...

What happens if the retired space telescope and former spy satellite crash into each other? ______________________________________________________________ Leo Labs, a venture-based company that monitors satellites in Low Earth Orbit, tweeted yesterday that it was tracking two satellites that will come within 15 to 30 meters of each other January 29, just before 6:40 p.m. EST. The two satellites are IRAS, a decommissioned NASA space telescope, and GGSE-4, a US Naval Research Lab intelligence satellite. They're set to sweep past each other in the skies above Pittsburgh at an altitude of about 559 miles above Earth's surface. _____________________________________________________________________ LeoLabs, a company that...

The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that may complicate retirement planning options for Americans. The House passed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019 on May 23. If enacted into law, it could be tricky for Americans who are not financially savvy investors. Some of the changes could benefit consumers: The law encourages more small employers to offer 401(k) plans and raises the age for required minimum distributions (RMDs) from retirement accounts to 72 from 70.5, a nod to longer life expectancies and later retirements. However, there are some changes that consumers should...

It was a little report, one you might easily have missed, from the people at Fidelity Investments: The number of people with more than a million dollars in their 401(k) is soaring. Bad news for the economics of envy. Fidelity says that the number of people at the end of the second quarter with a million dollars or more in their Fidelity 401(k) surged by 50,000 to 168,000, a 42% gain. Fidelity has 16.1 million 401(k) accounts under management, with an average balance of $104,000, up 6.4% from a year ago. "Individuals are increasing their savings rates, they're taking advantage...

Most nest eggs don't go much higher. Since the amount is not that much it will encourage people to keep working-at least part time. People with pensions and SSI seem to be getting gravy train investments that the poor just don't have access to. From time to time congress can allow $100k withdrawals for investment purposes as long as they have that extra $100k($600k). Keeps the money flowing.

Sorry for the vanity, but I'm dealing with a financial situation that is apparently a very unusual one and isn't easily addressed through traditional means. Long story short ... I'm looking into some options for opening a self-directed IRA (which is different from a self-managed IRA). The tax rules about these accounts are complicated, but I've determined that I can navigate them with minimal outside help. The issue I'm facing is that the IRS requires a third-party custodian to be involved in the process to file the necessary paperwork and annual tax forms. For the life of me, I cannot...

illary Clinton And Wall Street: Financial Industry May Control Retirement Savings In A Clinton Administration BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA AND AVI ASHER-SCHAPIRO ON 10/19/16 AT 12:50 AM Blackstone's Tony James: America's Not Great at Saving While Hillary Clinton has spent the presidential campaign saying as little as possible about her ties to Wall Street, the executive who some observers say could be her Treasury Secretary has been openly promoting a plan to give financial firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings. The executive is Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group. The investment colossus is most...

When academics are ready to fix a problem, hold onto your wallets. “America’s middle class faces a growing retirement crisis,” Christian Weller and Teresa Ghilarducci write in an issue brief for the Center for American Progress (CAP). “More than half of all working-age households are expected to be at risk of having to cut back their standard of living—often making painful adjustments—when they retire. “ “There are several reasons for the ever-larger looming crisis, but people’s inability to save enough money is a key obstacle to achieving more retirement security. On average, Americans need to save between 10 percent and...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of...

Another of history’s many lessons is that governments under pressure become thieves. And today’s governments are under a lot of pressure. Before we look at the coming wave of asset confiscations, let’s stroll through some notable episodes of the past, just to make the point that government theft of private wealth is actually pretty common... Will more countries introduce capital controls or asset confiscations in the next few years? Duh, of course. Debt levels are unmanageable, so they have to be lowered. And there are only three ways to do it: deflationary collapse that wipes out the debt through default,...

Explanation: Will this caterpillar-shaped interstellar cloud one day evolve into a butterfly-shaped nebula? No one is sure. What is sure is that IRAS 20324+4057, on the inside, is contracting to form a new star. On the outside, however, energetic winds are blowing and energetic light is eroding away much of the gas and dust that might have been used to form the star. Therefore, no one is sure what mass the resulting star will have, and, therefore, no one knows the fate of this star. Were the winds and light to whittle the protostar down near the mass of the...

The National Deficit, along with the lack of demand for Treasury Bonds, leaves the government with no other option!And what you don’t know can hurt you!Goldworth Financial first uncovered the early blueprint of our government’s plot to seize retirement accounts in early 2009. Since that time, we have come up with 10 Basic Questions that people have about this issue: 1. Who’s behind the plot to confiscate retirement accounts?The government takeover of private retirement accounts is a concept first drawn up by Teresa Ghilarducci, who was funded by the White House, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. President Obama’s...

Finding ET in the Data by Paul Gilster on April 17, 2013 As we saw yesterday, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) has been the source of data for a number of searches for unusual infrared signatures. The idea is to look for the artifacts of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, under the assumption that a sufficiently advanced culture will be capable of engineering projects that could be detected from light years away. A Dyson sphere, existing either as a completely enclosed star or as a swarm of artifacts around a star, is but one example of such engineering, but it’s a sensible...

Don’t put it past our politicians to try it in a financial emergency. The breaking of contracts by the U.S. government, unfortunately, has happened before, and what’s under way in Cyprus shows that feckless politicos will continue to try such things. In 1933–34, amid the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. government seized the American people’s gold holdings. From that point, until 1975, it was illegal for Americans to own gold, other than in some forms of jewelry or collectors’ coins. In the panic of the Depression years the courts upheld this unconstitutional confiscation. Yes, people received dollars in...

With Budget Proposal Obama Tells Us What Is A ‘Reasonable’ Amount To Have In Retirement Accounts April 6, 2013 Lonely Conservative With his budget proposal, President Obama has told us what he believes is a “reasonable” amount to have in a retirement account. $3 million is the number he chose. According to a White House statement, the Obama administration believes the current rules allow some wealthy individuals “to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”“The budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an...

Isn't freedom great? If you've held a company-sponsored 401(k) or 403(b), you know that your company gave you a false sense of freedom. They said that you were "free" to pick from any one of the handful of mutual funds that they picked for you. Picking from their choices doesn't seem like much freedom, but maybe you took the extra step and opened an IRA. Now that's freedom. With IRAs opened outside of your company, you have the choice of just about any investment option on the market. Ninety-four billion dollars is invested in self-directed IRA accounts, where many...

A recent hearing sponsored by the Treasury and Labor Departments marked the beginning of the Obama Administration’s effort to nationalize the nation’s pension system and to eliminate private retirement accounts including IRA’s and 401k plans, NSC is warning. The hearing, held in the Labor Department’s main auditorium, was monitored by NSC staff and featured a line up of left-wing activists including one representative of the AFL-CIO who advocated for more government regulation over private retirement accounts and even the establishment of government-sponsored annuities that would take the place of 401k plans. “This hearing was set up to explore why Americans...

Government Sets Its Sights on Private Retirement Accounts: “Giant Effort to Redistribute the Wealth of America’s Older Citizens” Mac Slavo November 20th, 2012 A new effort by the Obama administration, Congress, the Treasury Department and labor unions aims to fundamentally alter how Americans plan and save for retirement. Warnings have been popping up over the last several years about the possibility of re-appropriating the $3.5 Trillion sitting in private retirement and spreading those funds around to Americans who are deemed less fortunate. This couldn’t possibly happen in America, right? At one time, most Americans also believed heath care mandates that...

Uncle Sam, in a desperate attempt to fix its $16 trillion-plus deficit, is leering over Americans’ retirement nest egg as its new bailout fund. Capitol Hill politicians are assessing tax changes that could let the Internal Revenue Service lay claim to a portion of the $18 trillion sitting in 401(k) accounts and other tax breaks used by middle-class workers, including cutting the mortgage tax deduction. A commission looking for ways to close the deficit, and, noting the extent of 401(k) tax breaks, recommends an examination of the system as one way to prevent government bankruptcy. Besides 401(k)s, other possibilities include...

If you didn’t know anything about the stock market before October 4, you’d think the US had the strongest economy ever.  The Dow rallied more than 1,220 points since then - a gain of 12%! Naturally, the uninformed investor may think it’s time to jump into this bull market. However, thousands of investors are waking up to the reality of Wall Street - that it’s become more of a Vegas gamble than an investment based on fundamentals. Nothing is backing this latest rally, except for a few headlines swaying public sentiment. When the media announces that Europe has found a...